Baba Suwe Goes To Supreme Court

Popular actor and comedian, Babatunde Omidina (also known as Baba Suwe), has headed to the Supreme Court to challenge the Court of Appeal’s overturning of his N25 million compensation.

Mr. Omidina, who filed the appeal through his lawyer, Bamidele Aturu, prayed the apex court to reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

A Lagos High Court had, in 2011, ordered the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, to pay Mr. Omidina N25 million as damages for keeping him in custody beyond the legal time limit on the suspicion of drug ingestion.

However, last May, the Court of Appeal overturned the judgment, noting that the NDLEA was a law enforcement agency with the responsibility of curbing drug trafficking.

“The detention of the respondent was not up to a year. What then informed the award of N25 million?” asked the court.

“Assuming the Respondent was unlawfully detained for nine days as found by the trial judge, one would not deny the fact that an award of N25 million for nine days is oppressive, excessive, unrealistic, and indeed perverse.

“There was no basis to attract such punitive penalty,” the court added.

Mr. Omidina was arrested on 12th October, 2011, at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, on his way to Paris.

The NDLEA detained him on the suspicion of ingestion of drugs, first for nine days, and then secured a Federal High Court detention order and held him for a further ten days.

Mr. Omidina did not excrete any hard drug.

In his appeal at the Supreme Court, Mr. Omidina urged the apex court to uphold his appeal.

Mr. Aturu said that the justices of the Court of Appeal erred in their judgment.

“There is no law that stipulates that an Applicant who seeks compensation for the violation of his or her right should have been detained for one year to be entitled to compensation,” said Mr. Aturu.

“The Court of Appeal failed to follow decisions of the Supreme Court of Nigeria that made it clear that once a person’s right has been shown to have been violated, compensation is automatic,” he added.

In the appellate court’s judgment, the court insisted that the NDLEA’s detention of Mr. Omidina for 19 days was not “unreasonable” because it had the prerogative to keep a suspect for the period of investigation.

Mr. Aturu argued that the NDLEA had no power to keep a person in detention without bringing him to court within the period provided in the Constitution.

“The NDLEA obtained a detention order from the Federal High Court nine days after it had kept the Appellant in detention in violation of the period prescribed by Section 35 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, as amended,” Mr. Aturu said.

“The fact that the NDLEA claimed to be investigating the allegation of commission of crime against the Appellant is not a warrant for breaching the unambiguous provision of Section 35 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria,” he added.